Note: This is based on an old (2018) Quo­ra an­swer.

If I asked you "How much hard drive space would be re­quired for a Data­base rep­re­sent­ing ev­ery pos­si­ble po­si­tion in chess?" what would you an­swer?

Well, most an­swers go like this:

"Claude Shan­non es­ti­mat­ed there are 10⁴³ po­si­tions in chess, which can be stored in ~32 bytes each, so it's some­thing like 10⁴⁴ bytes, and the ob­serv­able uni­verse has on­ly 10⁸⁰ atoms so it's some­thing pret­ty large!"

To that I say phooey Shan­non! It takes around 700 bytes if you want the fan­cy ver­sion.

Let's start by defin­ing what the re­quest­ed ar­ti­fact is.

"A data­base rep­re­sent­ing ev­ery pos­si­ble po­si­tion in chess"

So, what is such a database's be­hav­iour? I pro­pose:

1. It can, if giv­en some sort of in­dex val­ue, re­turn a spe­cif­ic po­si­tion (which will al­ways be the same)
2. It can it­er­ate over all chess po­si­tion­s.
3. It should be able to re­turn all po­si­tions match­ing a spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria like 'has a white pawn in D5'

My pro­posed im­ple­men­ta­tion will do the first 2 which I con­sid­er ac­tu­al re­quire­ments, the 3rd be­ing just a "nice to have". While it's not im­pos­si­ble to ad­d, even my will­ing­ness to do stupid things has a lim­it.

So, lim­it­ing my­self to the first two re­quire­ments, if I ful­fill those then it's done, right? Be­cause if the de­liv­er­able is cor­rec­t, the rest is im­ple­men­ta­tion de­tail­s?

Let's im­ple­ment it!

Step 1: notation

Wel­come to Forsyth-Ed­wards no­ta­tion (FEN for short­). It's a won­der­ful thing that pro­vides all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to restart a game.

I will use a hacked sub­set since all I want is the po­si­tion (not things like "has white cas­tled?" or "who is mov­ing nex­t?") but it's a triv­ial ex­er­cise to ex­pand this data­base to do just that.

So, how does this data­base de­scribe a po­si­tion? A po­si­tion is a list of pieces and their po­si­tions in a 8x8 board.

In the orig­i­nal FEN white pawn is iden­ti­fied as P and black pawn as p. I con­sid­er that an in­sult to the IETF who has adopt­ed UT­F-8 in RFC2777 (and al­so slight­ly racist), there­fore I will use the prop­er glyph­s: ♙ and ♟.

In fac­t, I will use ♙♘♗♖♕♔♟♞♝♜♛♚.

As for po­si­tion­s, since my data­base is small enough that da­ta com­pres­sion is point­less, let's just use a 64-char­ac­ter fixed-­size string where each po­si­tion is ei­ther a piece of a space mean­ing the square is emp­ty.

So, a position is a string of length 64 where these are the only valid values: "♙♘♗♖♕♔♟♞♝♜♛♚ "

Step 2: implementation

It's ob­vi­ous that each po­si­tion is equiv­a­lent to a 64-dig­it num­ber in base 13, which means there are 196 053 476 430 761 073 330 659 760 423 566 015 424 403 280 004 115 787 589 590 963 842 248 960 pos­si­ble po­si­tion­s.

That 64-dig­it num­ber is the in­dex key for each po­si­tion (it's an op­ti­mal key, it can't be made any small­er!)

So here's the data­base core code, of­fered with no com­ments since it's bare­ly 12 lines of code do­ing noth­ing weird:

def get_position(index):
    def digit_to_char(digit):
        return "♙♘♗♖♕♔♟♞♝♜♛♚ "[digit]

    def str_base(number, base=13):
        (d, m) = divmod(number, base)
        if d:
            result = str_base(d, base) + digit_to_char(m)
        else:
            result = digit_to_char(m)
        return result

    position = str_base(index).rjust(64)
    return position

For con­ve­nience, here is a pret­ty print­er for your board­s:

def print_board(position):
    print(" ABCDEFGH ")
    for i in range(8):
        print("%d%s%d" % (i, position[8 * (i) : 8 * (i + 1)], i))
    print(" ABCDEFGH ")

Here you can see it in ac­tion (sad­ly asci­ine­ma butch­ers the align­men­t, it works prop­er­ly in re­al life):

And here is the full source code:

def get_position(index):
    def digit_to_char(digit):
        return "♙♘♗♖♕♔♟♞♝♜♛♚ "[digit]

    def str_base(number, base=13):
        (d, m) = divmod(number, base)
        if d:
            result = str_base(d, base) + digit_to_char(m)
        else:
            result = digit_to_char(m)
        return result

    position = str_base(index).rjust(64)
    return position


def print_board(position):
    print(" ABCDEFGH ")
    for i in range(8):
        print("%d%s%d" % (i, position[8 * (i) : 8 * (i + 1)], i))
    print(" ABCDEFGH ")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys

    print_board(get_position(int(sys.argv[1])))

Please no­tice that this data­base al­so cov­ers all al­ter­na­tive chess vari­ants where ex­tra pieces are giv­en or re­moved as hand­i­cap.

Step 3

There is no step 3.

Me gus­tan los te­cla­dos y es­toy gran­de. Eso sig­ni­fi­ca que ten­go una me­mo­ria pro­ba­ble­men­te injus­ti­fi­ca­da de que me gus­ta­ban los te­cla­dos de mis pri­me­ras com­pu­ta­do­ra­s.

No, no el te­cla­do de mi Ti­mex Sin­clair 1000, eso es li­te­ral­men­te un sti­cker, no hay canti­dad de am­ne­sia se­lec­ti­va que me ha­ga apre­ciar­lo.

Pe­ro ... la C64? Bue­no, eso era un te­cla­do me­cá­ni­co, no?

Así que cuan­do me oí de Ke­y­Rah ha­ce un tiem­po que es una pla­ca que te de­ja usar el te­cla­do de C64 (y otro­s!) co­mo dis­po­si­ti­vo USB em­pe­cé a con­si­de­rar usar una C64 mnuer­ta pa­ra al­go úti­l?

Así que si bien no es mi que­ri­da "brea­dbi­n", cuan­do una C64-C sin mo­ther­board apa­re­ció ... bue­no, lo hi­ce.

Es una "Drean Co­m­mo­do­re 64 C" he­cha en San Luis, pro­ba­ble­men­te en 1986 y es­ta­ba MU­GRIEN­TA.

La abrí, sa­qué ca­da te­cla y re­sor­te.

Ca­da uno de los re­sor­tes te­nía aden­tro una pe­lu­sa de mu­gre, y to­das las te­clas es­ta­ban cu­bier­tas con al­go pe­ga­jo­so. Por lo me­nos los re­sor­tes no es­ta­ban oxi­da­dos y las ke­y­caps se lim­pia­ron con agua y ja­bó­n.

Pa­re­cen ser PBT dou­ble-s­hot y 1.65­mm de gro­so­r, y te­nien­do en cuen­ta que tie­nen 35 años su­pon­go que son du­ra­bles :-)

Las le­yen­das en el fren­te son dye-­sub pe­ro esa par­te no la to­can los de­dos así que no im­por­ta.

El me­ca­nis­mo es inu­sual pa­ra un usua­rio mo­der­no:

• El re­sor­te ex­ter­no!
• Tie­ne una es­pe­cie de pa­ds de gra­fi­to que se usa pa­ra ce­rrar el cir­cui­to
• Los swi­tches no es­tán co­nec­ta­dos al PCB

El PCB te­nía unos tra­cks du­do­so­s, pe­ro an­da­ba

Lo ar­mé po­nien­do el Ke­y­Ra­h, le fal­tan un mon­tón de tor­ni­llos que ha­brá que com­pra­r, su­pon­go.

Un po­co de es­fuer­zo ar­mán­do­la ...

Y lis­to, fun­cio­na!

Es­tá bue­no?

La ver­dad que no

• Tie­ne dos te­clas de cur­sor en vez de 4 (Lo de­be­ría ven­der co­mo "te­cla­do pa­ra vi­mer­s")
• El la­yout es ra­ro
• Los swi­tches son su­per "s­cra­tch­y", ten­go que ver si se pue­den lu­bri­car
• Es mu­u­u­uy pe­sa­do pa­ra ac­cio­nar
• Tie­ne un shi­ft lo­ck me­cá­ni­co!

Así que per­dí el tiem­po?

Nooooo!

Una vez que ten­ga mi ofi­ci­na pro­pia (ac­tual­men­te la com­par­to con mi se­ño­ra por la pan­de­mia) es­to va a ser al­go úti­l.

La idea es aña­dir una Pi4 (o al­go) aden­tro de la car­ca­za, tal vez con un par de SS­Ds gran­des (si, hay mu­cho lu­ga­r) y con­ver­tir­la en una con­so­la re­tro y no­do en mi clus­te­r, así que útil va a se­r.

To­das las imá­ge­nes es­tán en la ga­le­ría de la C64C

Bueno gen­te, ponien­do el canal en el freez­er por un tiem­po porque:

1) Ten­go proyec­tos que quiero hac­er, pero ... 2) No ten­go muchas ganas de hac­er videos y ... 3) Tam­bién ten­go una se­rie de proyec­tos que no tienen na­da que ver con tec­nología (ni puedo men­cionar)

En el video men­ciono que hice un tu­to­ri­al de co­mo bootear una Rasp­ber­ry Pi Ze­ro sin SD. Acá es­tá: http­s://github.­com/ralsi­na/ze­ro-n­f­s­root

Si quieren en­ter­arse de cuan­do sale un nue­vo video una man­era es suscribirse y apre­tar el botón de la cam­pani­ta ;-)